Sunday, October 29, 2017

A contributor to your column once observed that it is only
Nigerian women who say they are “pregnant for” their husbands or fiancés or
boyfriends. What is grammatically wrong with saying that? What do native
English speakers say to indicate that a man is responsible for a pregnancy?

Answer:

Well, in response to the observation of the commenter, who
lives in London, I wrote: “Yes, it is true that only Nigerians say a
woman is pregnant ‘for a man.’ It’s probably a translation of socio-cultural
thoughts from some Nigerian languages, but the Nigerian languages I am familiar
with have no equivalent expression for that phrase. I will only add that native
English speakers usually say they are…‘pregnant by a man’ to show that the
‘man’ is responsible for the pregnancy. Americans (both wife and husband) now
say ‘we are pregnant’!”

Now that I think about it again, it seems to me that the tendency
for Nigerian women to say they are “pregnant for” a man is a reflection of
their internalization of and capitulation to the dominant patriarchal arrogance
in the Nigerian society. The phrase gives ownership of the child to the man— to
the exclusion of the woman who carries the baby in her stomach for nine months.
Since a child is biologically half of both its father and its mother, it is
illogical to say you’re pregnant “for” a man. In fact, only the mother can
logically claim ownership of a pregnancy. As the commenter you referred to
said, “A woman cannot be pregnant for somebody else except for herself!” Being
responsible for a pregnancy doesn’t give a man ownership of it; at best it
gives the man part ownership of it. Maybe a surrogate mother can correctly say
she’s “pregnant for” another woman or for a couple since the woman or the
couple takes ownership of the child after delivery.

Saying you’re “pregnant for” a man is especially problematic
because while a child’s maternal connection is often never in contention
(except in rare cases of child swapping in hospitals), its paternity is never
always indisputably self-evident except through DNA testing or noticeably
striking resemblance. That’s why Americans humorously say “Mommy’s baby,
daddy’s maybe.”

Question:

I met an American girl online some time ago. In the course of our
chat, she told me she wasn’t married, so I said something about her being a
“spinster” and she got upset. What’s wrong with calling an unmarried woman a
spinster? What am I missing?

Answer:

You’re missing a lot. In contemporary English usage, the word
spinster is considered pejorative. Careful speakers and writers avoid it.
According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “In modern
everyday English spinster cannot be used to mean simply 'unmarried woman'; it
is now always a derogatory term, referring or alluding to a stereotype of an
older woman who is unmarried, childless, prissy, and repressed."

So, by the conventions of modern usage, it’s incorrect to call a
young woman in her 20s or 30s—or maybe even early 40s— a “spinster.” The word
is reserved only for women who are still unmarried—and childless— by the time
they reached or are approaching menopause.

American English uses “bachelorette” or “bachelor girl” to refer
to an unmarried young woman. Note, though, that these terms are absent in
British English, although America’s cultural dominance ensures that they are
widely understood. “Single” or “single woman” appears to be the preferred term
across all native English varieties.

Question:

I am often confused about the right word to use to describe a
former student of a school. Is it alumni, alumna or alumnus?

Answer:

Even native English speakers are confused by these words, and it’s
because the words are part of the few Latin borrowings in English that have not
been Anglicized; they still retain their Latin inflections for gender and
number.

A former male student of a school is called an “alumnus.” The
plural is “alumni.” A former female student of a school is called an “alumna.”
The plural is “alumnae.” However, the male plural, that is, “alumni,” is used
as the plural of choice for all former students of a school irrespective of
gender. So it is correct to say the “alumni of Bayero University Kano” even
though the university has both male and female former students. But it is
incorrect to use “alumni” to refer to all-female former students of a school.
The correct word is “alumnae.” For example, it is wrong to say “the alumni of
Federal Government Girls’ College Bakori.” Replace “alumni” with “alumnae.”

Because of the difficulty in remembering the subtleties of usage
between alumnus, alumna, alumni, and alumnae, native English speakers have
informally invented “alum” as a catch-all, gender-neutral, singular form for
former students, as in, “she is an alum of ABU,” “he is an alum of Barewa
College.”

Your question reminded me of a recent comical incident that
happened on a Nigerian online discussion forum. A conceited and overly
self-assertive Nigerian who lives in the United States wanted to impress
members of the discussion forum by claiming that he was “an alumni of Harvard Business
School.” Someone pointed out that a person who went to Harvard should know
enough to know that “alumni” is a plural noun and can’t be used to refer to a
single former student.

Instead of accepting the correction in good faith, the ignorant
braggart defended his solecism. So someone on the discussion board sent an
email to Harvard Business School to find out if indeed someone by his name
graduated from their school. It turned out that he didn’t get a degree from the
school; he only attended a one-week workshop organized by Harvard Business
School at a city other than where the school is located!

Question:

Someone told me that the word “thuggery” is a uniquely Nigerian
English word. The person seems to be right because each time I type the word on
Microsoft Word it always gets underlined. Please let us know if the word is
indeed exclusive to Nigeria.

Answer:

You are the third person to ask this question. No, it’s not at all
true that “thuggery” is an idiosyncratic Nigerian English word. It occurs regularly
in native-speaker English, and is derived from “thug,” which means an
aggressive or violent criminal. It entered the English language in the 1800s
from the Hindi word “thag,” which means a rogue, a thief, a scoundrel,
or a cheat. In the past, in India, there existed a professional association of
thieves and assassins who murdered their victims by strangulating them. They
were called “Thag.” When reference is made to this group, the first letter in
the word is always capitalized, as in, “Thug.”

When I checked the British National Corpus, I saw several past and
contemporary uses of “thuggery.” Conservative Republican House of
Representatives member Michele Bachmann caused a stir in 2013 when she accused President Obama of “thuggery.” “I
think we could be on the cusp of seeing civil disobedience — I’m not saying I
want civil disobedience — but people aren’t going to take the thuggery of this
president much longer. We see thuggery going on in the White House. We’re not
going to take it,” she said. “Thug” and “thuggery” have now emerged as code
words of choice among American conservatives to refer to black people.

So “thuggery” is by no means an exclusively Nigerian English word.
The fact that Microsoft Word underlines it says nothing about its use and
acceptance in native-speaker English. Microsoft Word, as you probably know, has
a really limited internal dictionary, although its red underlines can often do
a good job of alerting us to misspellings and unusual, sometimes misused, words.

Saturday, October 28, 2017

President Muhammadu Buhari is infamously impervious to, and even
contemptuous of, public opinion. That’s why his order to fire Abdulrasheed
Maina who was surreptitiously reinstated into the civil service and promoted to
the next level in spite of weighty allegations of corruption against him was
both refreshing and pleasantly surprising.

Of course, the real, far-reaching surprise would be if the
president is able to summon the testicular fortitude to fire the people who
conspired to pull off this audacious perversion of justice and civil service
protocols.

While it’s gratifying that the president has asked that the
issue be thoroughly investigated, the fate of previous investigations of
corruption involving people close to the president (such as Babachir David
Lawal) doesn’t inspire confidence that anything earthshaking will come out of
this.

But maybe—just maybe—the president has now had enough and is
determined to salvage what remains of his severely diminished reputation
through a full-throated attack on the corruption of not just his political
opponents but also of his close associates, which is frankly the sincerest test
of his will to fight corruption.

The Head of Service of the Federation, the Minister of
Interior, the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, and other
co-conspirators may yet get the boot. Should that happen, I’d be one of the
people whose confidence in the president would be restored. But don't hold your
breath.

What’s most significant, though, is the fact that
Abdulrasheed Maina is not an aberration in this administration. He is merely an
addition to a list that is already distressingly long. Let me recapitulate a
few names that are going the rounds in Nigerian social media circles.

A certain Louis Edozien who was fired in 2014 as Executive
Director at the Niger Delta Power Holding Company (NDPHC) for failure to
produce authentic credentials during an audit was reinstated and promoted to
the position of Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Works, Power and Housing
in November 2016. NDPHC’s General Manager in charge of audit and compliance by
the name of Mrs. Maryam Mohammed who audited Edozien’s credentials and
recommended his firing was unjustly fired last year in apparent retaliatory vendetta.

The position of Permanent Secretary is normally the crowning
accomplishment of career civil servants, but Edozien isn’t a career civil
servant and shouldn’t be a permanent secretary, according to the Daily Trust of October 20, 2017, which said “highly placed officials in the
presidency facilitated” this rape of justice. SaharaReporters of October 12, 2017 was blunter: “Mr. Edozien is a friend and business
partner to Mr. [Abba] Kyari,” it wrote. “The Chief of Staff's daughter also
worked directly under Mr. Edozien.”

Interestingly, although the president reversed the dismissal
of Mrs. Mohammed after she wrote to him directly, Abba Kyari allegedly
overruled the president and, the woman, who is the mother of orphans, is still
unemployed. In many respects, this eclipses the impunity and scandalousness of
Maina’s reinstatement and promotion.

There is also the case of a Chief Registrar of the Supreme
Court by the name of Ahmed Gambo Saleh who, along with two others, was charged
with a N2.2 billion fraud on November 3, 2016. “The defendants are specifically
accused of conspiracy, criminal breach of trust and taking gratification by
Public officers contrary to Section 10 (a) (i) of the Independent Corrupt
Practices and other related Offences Act 2000 and punishable under the same
section of the Act,” according to theSun of November 4, 2016.

The same Saleh who hasn’t (yet) been absolved from the
charges against him was appointed Executive Secretary of the National Judicial
Council (NJC) on July 1, 2017. I know it’s technically outside the powers of
the president to intervene in issues involving another branch of government, but
we all know that the nocturnal bust of the homes of judges, including Supreme
Court justices, by Nigeria’s secret police in October 2016 had a stark,
unmistakable presidential imprimatur emblazoned all over it.

There is another “Maina” serving as a minister in Buhari’s
cabinet. According to the Premium Times of October 26, 2016, Buhari’s
Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Usani Usani, “was charged with fraud 15 years
ago, after he was indicted in 2000 by the government of Cross River State where
he served as a commissioner.” His indictment, the paper added, “is documented
in a state government White Paper.” It can’t get any more empirically
verifiable than that. Yet the man still serves as a minister in a government
that bills itself as an “anti-corruption” government.

The list goes on, but I’ll stop here because of the
constraints of space and time. It is ironic that a government with this depth
and breadth of love affair with corrupt people has the chutzpah to talk about
“fighting corruption.” But the clearest sign that this government is a joke and
that it’s “anti-corruption” fight is an even bigger joke came on October 25
when a presidential news release blamed “invisible hands” from the Goodluck
Jonathan administration for the Maina embarrassment.

“[S]ome influential
officials loyal to the previous government may have been the invisible hand in
the latest scandal that saw the return of Maina to the public service, despite being
on the EFCC’s wanted list,” the statement said.

When I first read it on a listserv on Wednesday, I thought
it was a spoof and let out a burst of deep, loud, hearty laughter. I said it
was impossible for this to be true until I read it in respected traditional
news outlets. I give up. The battle has been lost irretrievably.

Buhari’s Commendable
Biafra Gesture

News that Buhari has approved the payment of pension to
ex-Biafran police officers who served on the rebel side during Nigeria’s
30-month Civil War from 1967 to 1970 is heartening. It is little symbolic
gestures like this that nurture national cohesion.

National cohesion won’t magically emerge out of thin air
because some leader proclaimed that Nigeria’s unity is “settled” and
“non-negotiable”—or that the question of Nigeria’s unity had been settled with
some rebel leader at a private meeting. Nation-building is never “settled” and
is always in a state of negotiation and renegotiation.

Unity is consciously sowed, watered, and nourished by acts
of kindness to the disadvantaged, by equity and justice to all, by
consensus-building, by deliberate healing of the existential wounds that
naturally emerge in our interactions are constituents of a common national
space, and by acknowledging and working to cover our ethnic, religious,
regional, and cultural fissures.

If Buhari, from the incipience of his presidency, had
offered this sort of olive branch to parts of Nigeria that didn’t vote for him,
we won’t have the current immobilizing fissiparity that is threatening to tear
down the very foundation of the country. But it’s never too late to do the
right thing.

Sunday, October 22, 2017

I had a conversation with a native English speaker
sometime ago. In the course of our conversation, I said something about “adding
weight,” that is, getting fatter, but he didn’t understand me. It then occurred
to me that I was probably speaking Nigerian English, which wasn’t
comprehensible to him. How do native English speakers say it?

Answer:

Native English speakers say “gain weight,” not “add
weight,” as in, “If you eat a lot of fatty foods, you will gain weight.” You
are right that “add weight” is the Nigerian English expression for “gain
weight” in Standard English. Alternative Standard English expressions for “gain
weight” are “put on weight” and “add pounds” (especially in informal American English).
The Nigerian English “add weight” was probably formed on the model of “add
pounds.”

Native English speakers use “add weight” often in a
metaphorical sense to mean “make stronger,” such as saying, “Buhari’s
reluctance to fire his corrupt Secretary to the Government of the Federation
adds weight to the argument that his so-called anti-corruption fight is a
farce.”

“Add weight” is also used in Standard English to
denote physically increasing the heaviness of something by adding extra stuff
on it. If someone is carrying a half bucket of water, for instance, and you
pour some more water into it, you’re adding weight to their load.

It’s interesting that although Nigerians say “add
weight” to mean “gain weight” they don’t say “subtract weight” or “take off
weight” to mean “lose weight,” perhaps because the literalness of “subtract” or
“take off” is immediately apparent. The antonym of “gain” is “lose” and the
antonym of “add” is “subtract.” If you don’t “subtract” or “take off” weight
you why do you “add weight”?

Question:

What is
the proper way to call a car with two doors or four doors, because people in
Nigeria call cars with two doors “one-door-cars.”

Answer:

I, too,
have always wondered why Nigerians refer to two-door cars as “one-door” cars.
As far as I know, in no other variety of English is a two-door car called a
“one-door” car. So I would say the proper way to call a car with two doors is a
two-door car. A four-door-car is also, well, a four-door-car.

Question:

I have a
friend in my office who so loves your write-ups that he now even spends his
last kobo to buy Daily Trust on Sunday because of your
columns. Can you clarify for me conventional/nonconventional uses of "you
and I" and “you and me”?

Answer:

As I wrote in previous articles, the trick to
knowing how to use the pronouns correctly is to first know that pronouns are
usually categorized into "subjective" pronouns and
"objective" pronouns. Subjective pronouns always function as the
subject (that is, main doer of action) in a sentence. Examples: I, we, they,
he, she. "Objective" pronouns, on the other hand, always function as
the object (that is, recipient of action) in a sentence. Examples: me, us,
them, him, her.

So if you
look at a sentence and can determine its subject and object, you can pretty
much tell when "I" and "me" are used wrongly. Look at this
sentence, for instance: “He said the bag was for you and I.” That sentence is
wrong because "he" is already the subject of the sentence. The
"I" in the sentence should be "me" because "me"
is the recipient of an action, that is, it is the object of the sentence.

If that explanation isn’t helpful, always
remember that “you and me” is almost always interchangeable with “us” while
“you and I” is almost always interchangeable with “we.”

Question:

Between
“on my mind” and “in my mind” which is grammatically correct?

Answer:

"On
my mind" and "in my mind" are both correct depending on the
context. "On my mind" means something is bothering you. Example: “The
plight of the poor is on my mind.” "In my mind," on the other hand,
means something resides in your imagination. Example: "I have a picture in
my mind of an idyllic village in the deserts of the Sahara.”

Question:

Is it
grammatically correct to say “if he were here?” What of “if he was here”?

Answer:

I wrote
about this in a previous article. Here is what I said: “There is still a fierce
battle among grammarians about the appropriateness of these phrases. In
grammar, “if I were” is referred to as being in the “subjunctive mood.” The
subjective verb represents the form of a verb used to represent an act or a
state that has not happened and has no likelihood of happening but that has
nevertheless been imagined. For instance, when Beyonce sang “If I were a boy,”
she clearly implied that she was actually not a boy nor could she be one, but
imagined herself as one nonetheless. Semantic purists insist that on occasions
such as this, “if I were” is the only acceptable expression.

“But the
subjunctive verb, which was prevalent in Middle English (i.e. from about 1100
to 1450), is now obsolete. It’s only in the expression “if I were” that it has
endured in modern English. Increasingly, however, people, especially young
people in both Britain and America, are replacing “if I were” with “if I was,”
although “if I was” used to be considered uneducated English. (For recent
notable examples of the use of “if I was” in popular hit songs, refer to Far
East Movement’s “If I was you” and Liza Minnelli’s “If there was love”). It is
inevitable that “if I were” will ultimately die and be replaced with “If I
was.” But, for now, my advice is this: use “if I were” in formal contexts and
“if I was” in informal contexts.

Question

I want
some explanation on this issue: The word “welcome” is an irregular verb but I
see that both the BBC and CNN sometimes use it as if it were a regular verb.

Answer:

“Welcome"
is a regular verb. Its present tense is "welcome," its past tense is
"welcomed," and its participle is "welcomed." But when
"welcome" is used as an adjective (that is, when it means
"giving pleasure or satisfaction or received with pleasure or freely
granted", as in: "your suggestions are welcome"), it does not
have a "d" at the end. That is, it would be wrong to write "your
suggestions are welcomed." So CNN and BBC are right to use
"welcome" as a regular verb.

Saturday, October 21, 2017

World Bank president Jim Yong Kim, in a news conference on
October 12, reported President Muhammadu Buhari as having said the World Bank
should “shift our focus to the northern regions of Nigeria.” Several
commentators, particularly from the South, said the revelation provided
evidence of the president’s prejudicial northern subnationalism. The
president’s defenders, on the other hand, said he actually meant the
“northeast.”

Rather strangely,
both the president’s critics and his defenders are right. Here is what I mean.

According to the transcript of the conference on the World Bank’s website, the question that
elicited Kim’s response was, “what is the World Bank doing to support those
ravaged in the northeastern part of Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorists?” In
other words, the questioner specifically wanted to know what the World Bank was
doing about northeastern Nigeria in light of the devastation that has been
wrought upon the region by years of Boko Haram insurgency.

It's therefore not unreasonable to assume that the World
Bank chief meant that the president told him to focus attention on the
northeast. Most non-Nigerians have no awareness of, or interest in, our
arbitrary cartographic nomenclatures such as “northeast,” “northcentral,”
“northwest,” etc., although the World Bank’ chief’s reference to “the northern
regions [note the plural] of Nigeria” at best complicates and at worst
invalidates my observation.

But since we didn’t hear these words directly from Buhari’s
mouth, it’s sensible to believe his spokesperson who said the president meant
the northeast, which every Nigerian agrees is in desperate need of a massive
infrastructural renewal. Plus, saying “focus” should be put in one part of the
country doesn’t necessarily imply an order to exclude other parts of the
country. In any event, a breakdown of the World Bank’s projects in Nigeria
shows that the South isn’t excluded.

However, it would be escapist, even dishonest, to ignore the
fact that Buhari’s personal politics and symbolic gestures both before he
became president and now that he is president conduce to the notion that he is
an unapologetic provincial chauvinist. Before he was elected president, he made
no pretense to being anything other than a “northern” subnationalist, which has
no precedent for a former or incumbent Nigerian president or head of state, at
least in public utterances.

Former president Goodluck Jonathan is an exception here. He
once publicly defended the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta’s
self-professed terrorism against Nigeria when it detonated two bombs in Abuja
that killed 12 people and injured 17 others on October 1, 2010. Although MEND’s
Jomo Gbomo sent out an email to the news media warning of the attack— and
actually claimed responsibility for it after the fact—Jonathan said MEND
couldn’t be responsible for the bomb attack because it would not sabotage the
administration of a fellow Niger Deltan like him.

“We know those behind
the attack and the persons sponsoring them,” he said. “They are terrorists, not
MEND. The name of MEND that operates in Niger Delta was only used. I grew up in
the Niger Delta, so nobody can claim to know Niger Delta than [sic] myself,
because I am from Niger Delta.” But he forgot that Niger Delta militants bombed
his house in his hometown of Otueke on May 16, 2007 in spite of his being a
Niger Deltan. Jonathan’s defense of Niger Delta terrorists out of
subnationalist solidarity caused me to write a caustic column on October 16, 2010
titled “A MENDacious President.”

Like Jonathan, Buhari also had his own moment of
subnationalist solidarity with Boko Haram terrorists. In June 2013, Buhari told
Liberty Radio in Kaduna that the sustained military assault on Boko Haram
insurgents while Niger Delta militants were being mollycoddled by the
government through “amnesty” was unfair to the “north.”

And, although, he recanted and later redeemed himself after
his infamous “97%” versus “5%” gaffe in Washington, D.C., it’s nonetheless
legitimate to contend that it was a Freudian slip that betrayed his genuine
thoughts, especially in light of the pattern of his appointments, which I once
characterized as undisguisedly Arewacentric.

There are other symbolic miscues that feed the notion of
Buhari’s provincial particularism. For instance, when he canceled his planned
visits to the Niger Delta and to Lagos, he didn’t send personal apologies to
the people. But when he canceled his visit to Bauchi, he recorded a video
apology in Hausa to the people of Bauchi State. Again, during his sick leave in
London, he recorded a personal audio sallah message only for Hausa-speaking
Muslims. Yoruba, Auchi, non-Hausa-speaking northern Muslims, etc. were
excluded. He picked and chose even among Muslims.

Buhari’s interpersonal discomfort with, and perhaps contempt
for, Nigerians who are different from him—often expressed through awkward snubs
and linguistic exclusivism—go way back. On page 512 of Ambassador Olusola Sanu’s
2016 autobiography titled Audacity on the
Bound: A Diplomatic Odyssey, for instance, we encounter this trait:

“I was asked by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs… to
accompany Major-General Buhari on a trip to West Germany when he was Petroleum
Minister in 1978,” he wrote. “During the flight, to and fro, [he] did not say a
word to me even when we sat side by side in the first class compartment of the
plane. When we got to Germany and went to the Nigerian Ambassador’s residence,
[he] spoke entirely in Hausa throughout with the Ambassador-in-post. He did not
speak to me throughout the trip. I was deeply hurt and disappointed.”

Interestingly, Ambassador Sanu actively supported Buhari in
2015, and probably still does. “Time is a great healer and I bear Buhari no
malice,” he wrote, pointing out that, “I believe Buhari is now a changed man
and Nigeria in decline is in need of disciplined, honest, focused and
purposeful leadership to turn it around.” Well, you be the judge.

Now, let me be clear: there is immense merit in speaking our
native languages. I actually applaud people of President Buhari’s political and
symbolic stature who show pride in their native languages by speaking it
anywhere without apology. But that’s not the issue here. In a complex and
plural country that is torn by the push and pull of competing cultural, ethnic,
and linguistic fissures such as Nigeria, there are moments when linguistic
subnationalism from leaders can become fodder for untoward fissiparity.

Buhari’s insularity may be a consequence of his limited
education and socialization outside his comfort zone, but a country whose
political leaders perpetually proclaim that their country’s unity is “settled
and non-negotiable” needs a leader who consciously works to unite the fissiparous
tendencies in the country; who puts nationalism above subnationalism; who
recognizes that to favor one’s own people is an instinctive impulse that is
effortless, but that what requires effort is the capacity to rise superior to
this base temptation and to be dispassionate, cosmopolitan, and fair to all.

So while Buhari most probably told the World Bank to focus
on the northeast, which is defensible, his history of ethno-regional chauvinism
provides grounds for people to be suspicious of his utterances, even silences,
and motives.

Saturday, October 14, 2017

At least two categories of (male) Nigerian social media denizens
were disconcerted by the appointment of a Mrs. Aisha Ahmad as one the Central
Bank of Nigeria’s four deputy governors. The first group said she is
unqualified because her promotion as Executive Director by her bank was
suspiciously co-extensive with her appointment as CBN’s deputy governor,
suggesting that her promotion was done in anticipation— or as a direct consequence—
of her appointment.

To lend credibility to their claims, they falsely said being
Executive Director of a bank is a prerequisite for appointment to the position
of CBN deputy governor, and that it is this requirement that inspired her rapid
promotion. They also said her professional qualifications and experiences are
ill-suited to the position of deputy governor in charge of economic policy.

The second group, made up of mostly northern Muslim men,
said she was unworthy of her position—wait for it— because her formal western
attire doesn’t conform to the Islamic dress code for Muslim women! One widely
shared Facebook status update, in fact, defamed her as a “sex worker” on
account of her dressing. That’s a prima facie case of libel.

While these groups are animated by different impulses, they
are united by a common, gnawing patriarchal arrogance and unease with successful,
high-flying professional women. I can bet my bottom dollar that had she been an
older man, news of her appointment won’t even show up on Nigerian social media
radar. As the father of three girls—northern Nigerian Muslim girls like Mrs. Ahmad,
I might add—I have a personal and emotional investment in confronting and
fighting the culture of misogynistic bullying of successful women.

So let’s examine the first group’s assertions. An online
newspaper called TheCable, in an October 9 story titled “FACT CHECK: Is Aishah Ahmad really qualified to
be CBN deputy-governor?” exploded all the claims of the first group. It pointed
out, for instance, that Section 8 (1) of the CBN Act requires only that people
appointed as deputy governors be “persons of recognised financial experience.”

It does not require
that bankers appointed to deputy governorship of the CBN be executive
directors. “TheCable discovered that Suleiman Barau, currently deputy-governor
(corporate services), was not an ED before his appointment in 2007,” the paper
wrote. “His highest banking position was general manager… at the now defunct
FSB International Bank Plc.”

It’s also preposterous to argue that someone with a 20-year
experience in the finance industry isn’t fit to supervise the CBN’s economic
policy. That charge is not even worthy of engagement. While it’s true that Mrs.
Ahmad isn’t the most qualified person for the job, she’s sure as hell qualified
for it.

The fulmination of the second group is even more worrying
because it merely scratches the surface of a deep, abiding problem in our
region, which is the noxious fusion of disabling religious intolerance,
literalism, and exhibitionism.

Religion in the Muslim north revolves around (1.) a sick,
prurient obsession with the female body under the cover of religious decency,
(2.) exhibitionistic preening of the rituals of religiosity without a care for
ethics, truth, honesty, or kindness, and (3.) identity politics wrapped in and
sanctified by religion.

You can lie, cheat, murder, rape, steal, and generally be a
monster of moral perversion and you won‘t attract the condemnation of
self-appointed guardians of religious morality as long as you observe the
communal rituals of religiosity and mouth off familiar, stereotyped religious
idioms. That’s why 200 tons of date fruits donated by Saudi Arabia were stolen
and sold (during Ramadan!) by Muslims and there was not a whimper from people
who get in a tizzy when they see a woman—however virtuous she may be—unclad in
a hijab.

In fact, a three-term governor and serving senator from Yobe
State (who introduced Sharia in his state!) was recently caught almost literally
pants down—and with irrefutable videographic corroboration, too— in a threesome
with two women who are not his wives in a cheap, grubby brothel. There was no
outrage from the self-anointed moral police. On the contrary, most of them
defended the senator’s right to privacy, and cautioned against exposing a
fellow Muslim to ridicule. Between being unclad in a hijab and engaging in
adultery—and being impenitent about it when caught, as the senator was—which is
worthier of moral outrage?

On the other hand, you can be the very apotheosis of
justice, truth, probity, honesty, compassion, etc., but if you don’t “perform”
religiosity through your sartorial choices and through your public utterances,
you’re the devil himself. In other words, religion is more about form than
content, more about appearance than substance, more about cold structures than
essence, and more about public performance of group identity than about the
internalization and performance of genuine piety.

Every Muslim woman who falls short of the standards of
sartorial modesty enshrined in Islam is invariably described as being “naked”
and condemned as a “prostitute.” Such a woman’s moral character is irrelevant
as long as she violates—or is thought to violate— this sacred sartorial code.
But she can be morally debauched and be the proverb for cruelty, and she would
be celebrated (or at least be allowed to live in peace) as long as she wears a
hijab, knows her “place,” performs the identity rituals expected of her, and
doesn’t make a public show of her debauchery. In other words, a Muslim woman’s
entire worth is measured by her dressing.

Mufti Ismail Menk had these kinds of people in mind when he
said, “When you see a female dressed in a manner that is unacceptable
Islamically, do not for a moment think that she is lower than you spiritually.
If you do that, you are lower than her. Believe me, that is the teaching of
your religion. She might have a link with her Creator that you do not know
about. She might have a heart that is tons better than yours. She might have
one weakness that is outward, and you have 50 weaknesses that are hidden.”

The self-proclaimed male moral police who are fixated with
what Muslim women wear and don’t wear won’t admit that if they, too, are judged
by the standards and requirements of the religion they purport to defend they’d
all come up short. All of us would. Most of them don’t lower their gaze when
they encounter women (which is precisely why they pervertedly proclaim the
“nakedness” of clothed women and assume them to be “sex workers”), they
patronize banks that traffic in riba,
have pre- and extra-marital sexual liaisons, etc. Why do they think their own
transgressions are more tolerable and more defensible than a Muslim woman's
choice to not wear a hijab?

This is not a repudiation of the dress code prescribed for
women in Islam. It’s just an admission of the fact that we’re all imperfect
beings. We all have strengths in some areas and weaknesses in others. It’s
unfair to estimate people’s entire worth by just one weakness.

Mrs. Ahmad’s western attire might simply be what I like to
call protective sartorial mimicry, that is, the survivalist instinct that
causes us to dress in ways that help us to blend in with our immediate
environments. Maybe she doesn’t even dress that way outside her professional
circles. Most importantly, though, it’s not our place to sit in judgement upon
the personal choices of a 40-year-old wife and mother who is almost at the
pinnacle of her career.

Sunday, October 8, 2017

Just like skin bleaching is the chemically induced lessening
of the melanin of a dark or brown person’s skin, semantic bleaching occurs when
a word loses or lessens its original meaning and becomes an intensifier, that
is, a word that has no meaning except to lend emphasis to the word it modifies.
The most common intensifier in everyday speech is “very.” The word does nothing
more than add intensity to what we say. If I say, for instance, that “there
were very many people at the party,” I’ve merely used “very” for emphasis, and
nothing more.

So almost all intensifiers are semantically bleached words.
Linguists call them semantically bleached because they often represent a diminution
of their original meaning in the service of adding emphasis to the words they
modify. Let’s take the word “very” as an example. The word originally meant “true,” and it still does in some contexts. In fact, in the 13th century, the English word for “true,” according
to Dictionary.com, was “verai” (which
was borrowed from Norman French), from where it evolved to “very.” It shares
lexical ancestry with “verily,” “verisimilitude,” “veracity,” etc. which all
denote truthfulness. Although “very” still signifies “truth” in many uses, we
often don’t think of “truth” when we say things like, “That’s so not very nice
of you.”

Another common semantically bleached intensifier is
“really.” “Really” originally means “in accordance with truth, fact, or reality,”
that is, observable realness as opposed to imagination or fantasy. But “really”
has now been thoroughly semantically bleached and is now just used for emphasis,
such as when someone says, “Although he is not alone, I think he really feels
lonely.” The fact of someone feeling “lonely” can’t be proved in reality by
someone who doesn’t have a direct experience of the feeling. Although the
word’s original sense still endures in everyday language, its semantically
bleached version is now more popular.

A favorite catchphrase Texans cherish about their state is:
“everything is bigger in Texas.” Given Americans’ extravagant fondness for
exaggerations, intensification, and superlative expressions, they should
probably have a shamelessly immodest catchphrase for the whole nation that
says, “Everything is biggest in America.”

Americans are the masters of superlatives and
intensification. I have never seen a people whose conversational language is so
full of intentional and unintentional exaggerations as Americans.

In grammar, a superlative is the form of an adjective or an
adverb that indicates its highest level or degree. In the gradation of the
levels or degrees of adjectives or adverbs, it’s usual to talk of the base,
comparative, and superlative degrees. English superlatives are normally created
with the suffix “est” (e.g. wealthiest, strongest) or the word “most” (e.g.
most recent, most beautiful). But some words are by nature superlative and
require no suffix or "most" to indicate their degree. Examples:
absolute, favorite, unique, perfect, etc. Therefore, it would be superfluous
(or, as grammarians say it, pleonastic) to write or say "most
absolute," "most unique," etc.

So superlative expressions are boastful, hyperbolic
expressions that sometimes have no literal relationship with the reality they
purport to describe. In this essay, I identify the most common superlative
expressions I’ve encountered in American English.

In contemporary American English, instead of simply saying
something like “it’s really nice,” young Americans say “it totally rocks!” The
“best experience” becomes “the absolute best experience ever.” Kids no longer
just have “best friends”; they now have “Best Friends Forever.” There is even
an initialism for it: BFF. (An initialism, also called an alphabetism, is an
abbreviation made up of first letters of words or syllables, each pronounced
separately. E.g. HIV, BFF, CEO). My daughter changes her BFFs every other week!
“Forever” now has an expiration date.

On American TV it's now common to hear teenagers use
“bestest” (a nonstandard word) to heighten the sense that the superlative
adjective “best” conveys, as in: “we had the bestest party ever!” “Baddest” is
another nonstandard superlative in American youth lingo. The word has been a
part of African-American vernacular English (or Ebonics) for a long time. It’s
now fully integrated into mainstream, mostly youth, conversational English. But
“bad” here is not the absence of good. It is, on the contrary, the surfeit of
goodness or “kewlness” (kewlness is derived from “kewl,” which is the
nonstandard slang term for “cool,” i.e., fashionable, excellent, or socially
adept) or greatness. So “the baddest guy in town” in the language of the
American youth subculture means the best or greatest guy.

The intensifier “very” is now considered tame and lame in
American conversational English. It has effectively been replaced with “super.”
People are no longer just “very excited”; they are “super excited.” It’s no
longer common to hear people being described as “very smart”; they are “super
smart.” An alternative intensifier is “uber,” which is borrowed from German. It
means extreme or outstanding, as in, “uber-hero,” “uber-smart professor,” etc.

But it appears that “super” has also exhausted its
intensifying elasticity. It is now being replaced with “super-duper.” It’s now
typical to hear Americans say they are “super-duper excited” or that they have
eaten “super-duper burgers.”

Perfect. In America, everything is “perfect.” During
Christmas, New Year, Mother’s Day, etc. people get “perfect gifts” for their
loved ones. When appointment times work well, it’s “perfect timing.” Things are
not just “acceptable”; they are “perfectly acceptable.” President Obama once
described high-flying young country singer Taylor Swift as a “perfectly nice
girl.” She is not just nice; she is perfectly nice. Does that mean she has no
blemish of any sort? Of course no. It only means “perfect” has lost touch with
its original meaning.

When people respond to a question in the affirmative, a
simple “yes” is no longer sufficient. They say “absolutely!” The response to a
question like “did you have a good time there?” would more likely be
“absolutely!” than the hitherto conventional “yes, I did.”

In America, routine, quotidian events are habitually called
“one-of-a-kind.” On my daughter’s kid TV, programs are almost always described
as “one-of-a-kind TV event.”

And “best ever” has become the default phrase for just about
anything. My daughter calls me “the best dad ever” each time I give her a
treat. Her “best day ever” is any day she has lots of fun. Now, Americans are
graduating from “ever” to “ever ever.” An American friend of mine described one
of my Facebook pictures as “my most favorite picture of you ever ever”! Well,
“favorite” is itself a superlative word that does not admit of any intensifier
in standard grammar. To add "most" and “ever ever” to “favorite”
seems to me like imposing an unbearably excessive burden on my poor little
picture!

If an American hates this article, he would probably
call it the “worst article ever written article on American fondness for
superlatives.” If she is a teenager and likes it, she might call it the
“bestest written article on American fondness for superlatives ever ever.”

The American fascination with exaggeration and superlative
language is probably the consequence of the ubiquity of advertising in American
life. Advertising traditionally engages in hyperbole, deliberate overstatement,
and extravagant exaggeration. Now that advertising has become more omnipresent
and more intrusive than ever before (this is no American superlative, I swear!)
in American life, it is logical that it would influence their everyday
language.

Or it could very well be the linguistic evidence of
the over-sized image Americans cherish about themselves. When you’re used to
being the world’s number one in most things, it’s inevitable that it will
reflect in your language sooner or later.

But the effect of all this is that it has blurred the
dividing line between fact and fiction in everyday American life. I am now
dubious of many claims here. Everything here is the “world’s biggest.” For
instance, Atlanta’s international airport is called the “world’s biggest and
busiest airport.” Well, it turns out that the claim is not exactly accurate. In
terms of the number of passengers that pass through it annually, it is indeed
the world’s busiest airport. But in terms of land mass, there are much bigger
airports in the world.

A modestly sized farmer’s market here in Atlanta has also
been touted as “the world’s biggest farmer’s market.” If it indeed is, then
farmers’ markets elsewhere in the world must be really tiny.

Superlatives certainly make language colorful, but I worry
that their untrammeled profusion in everyday speech has the potential
to desensitize us to actually exceptional things around us.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). For more than 13 years, he wrote two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust). From November 2018, his political commentaries appear on the back page of the Nigerian Tribune on Saturday.In April 2014, Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.